Capitalizing on the Information in Allometric Equation Data Bases for Forest Biomass Estimation

In many countries, inventory data or biomass or volume equations are often incomplete or unavailable. Either taxonomic information is not accurate at the species level, or else no literature exist compiling particular allometric equations for some species. On the other hand, some species are represented by many alternative equations in the database. The vast quantity of information that allometric equation databases such as Globallometree can provide, can be capitalized to inform other, non-available species from the ranges and distributions of aboveground biomass estimates that other, better known species provide. In this study we provide an alternative method that takes those elements to estimate overall plot aboveground biomass from bootstrapping different equations belonging to a certain ecozone. Using a real inventory plot as an example, we prove that such estimates present error levels similar to those of generalized pantropical equations when a minimum set of rules for quality control has been added. This opens the possibility to establish more adequate quality control protocols that end up providing even better estimates than those published pantropical equations.